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Rose Hip Tarts

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Sometimes when you are researching ye olden timey recipes you find recipes that don’t make sense on the first read.

For example:
To make a tart of hips. Take hips and cut them, and take the seeds out, and wash them very clean, and put them into your tart, and season them with sugar, cinnamon and ginger. So you must preserve them with sugar, cinnamon and ginger, and put them into a jelly pot close.The Good Housewife’s Jewell (1596)

First sentence seems straight forward, take rose hips, sugar and seasoning and make a tart. Except even freshly picked hips would be hard and crunchy and not very appealing. The second half of the recipe about making jelly, might mean that you make a jelly first, which would be more appetising than but since it isn’t clear its best to pick a few similar recipes, from around he same time period, to compare it with.

How to make a tart of brier hips. Take hips and wash them, and boil them in claret wine, and strain them through a strainer, season them with cinnamon, ginger and sugar, and make your paste, and fill it with the same stuff.A Book of Cookrye (1591)

To make a tart of Hips. Take Hips, slit them, and pick out the kernels: then seethe them in white wine, or in faire water, when they bee soft sodden, strain them as thick as you can, and season them with cinnamon, ginger and sugar, and lay it in paste. The Good Huswifes Handmaide for the Kitchin (1594)

Directions
1) Put rose hips, wine, and water until hips are fully covered. Simmer hips on medium-low for 1 hour, until hips are soft and squishy.

2) Pour liquid through wire strainer, then carefully press hip meat through, a little at a time. The seeds and skins should stay in the strainer with the pulp and cooking liquid separated out. There will not be a lot of pulp through the strainer, but a lot of mess in the strainer.